The new Unknown. In 1789, we embarked on our maiden voyage as a republic under a new Constitution. It was all so new, there was so much we did not know, no contemporary examples to follow. Now we are about to embark on another maiden voyage of sorts: a government led by a man who has never before stood for, let alone won, an election, never served in public office, nor in the military.
CO's Voting turnout. According to a Denver Post story, CO ranked third in the nation with a 71.3% voter turnout. At this point it is uncertain what effect our mail-ballot system had; every registered CO voter received a ballot in the mail. There was also an online system for tracking your ballot's trip from the your county registrar to you and back.
CO's Rhodes Scholar. Hannah Carrese, a former high school student from Colorado Springs and Yale graduate, is the recipient of a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship. She wants to study the political and social effects of today's mass migrations resulting from turmoil. If well done, her resulting dissertation could be very illuminating. While in high school, she worked with refugees from Bhutan and later went to Mexico to work with those fleeing violence in Central America.
Missing Votes. Or, why did HRC lose? An article in "The Hill," November 15, provides some answers, beyond the obvious. Few grasped the dispaire that was afoot among the low and middle class and their willingness to cast aside their past allegiances in the search for something better. Even more than 2008, 2016-elections were about change, something too few recognized. The PE's (President-Elect) headlight was so bright that the looming train was unseen.
Deep distrust. The anti-Trump rallies and disturbances are the natural result of the fear now being felt by those who feel threatened by a Trump presidency. Facts: (1) The global world is not going away. (2) America will continue to grow, inevitably becoming more diverse. (3) For those whites who fell threatened, left behind, there is little they can do without getting the education needed to cope with an ever changing world. Do
A lesson from the past. It was in the 1980s as the steel mills in the Pittsburgh area were slowly being shuttered. A nursing supervisor, whose husband was soon to be unemployed, looked at the growing pool of unemployed males and the very few male nurses in her hospital, wondered....... The immediate problems, of course, were social, psychological and educational. How to convince manly former steel workers to go back to school, to be nurses???? There were, after all, two traditionally feminine dominated occupations: teaching and nursing.
Facing no income and no job prospects, she convinced her husband and a few others to make a leap of faith. It is took a while, but the pool slowly grew and, besides, these "new" nurses were filling a community need and sustaining both their families and egos. Big burly men could be both helpful and gentle. The Pittsburgh example spread. One wonders about present day coal miners and other former wrench-turners.
Thomas Friedman. From his latest book, Thank You for Being Late, "The three largest forces on the planet -- technology, globalization, and climate change -- are all accelerating at once...The greatest inflection point since Gutenberg." I would agree with Secretary of State, John Kerry and I that climate change offers no "do-overs."
Facebook, et. al. It is nice to know about your friends, but then there is the other reality: social media has been easily co-opted by the "dark side" and used to advance evil. Combined with modern search techniques, it dispenses falsehoods and places social critics in jeopardy, often life threatening.
Trump's Ear. A Washington Post story by said DT was choosing an array of advisers, not all of whom would agree. A dispertate group is good; dispertate AND knowledgeable is better. Lord knows DT's knowledge is limited in so many areas that he needs knowledgeable people. His intimates, the Washington operators, and Vice President-elect Pense. The nation will greatly benefit if he surprises us.
The Senate's role. Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute wrote, "The hopes for governance hewing closer to the center, and respecting all those living in the United States, rests with the Senate, and with the behavior and outlook of senators in both parties....For Senate Republicans, this is a critical moment to heed a call their colleague Lindsey Graham (S.C.) made earlier in the campaign — there is a time to put country ahead of party."
Energy policy. In HIGH COUNTRY NEWS, Jonathan Thompson notes that however much his supporters wish, President- Elect Trump can do very little to increase the demand for coal energy. However much he may "dig coal," cheap natural gas will be more attractive to energy producers and investors. A PBS Newshour segment (11-17-2016) amplified this point.
The Crossing. Crossing comes to mind with many different contexts, most frequently, I would imagine, in "coming to America." This human interest story from this past Sunday's Washington Post's "Optimist" section has a very different story line: a county medical examiner in Laredo, TX, who is seeking to identify bodies found in the desert, anonymous souls who died trying to reach what they undoubtedly saw as their promised land. Migrants whom, had they been successful, harbored the hope of a new life in America.
Laredo was where [Corinne] Stern had arrived a decade before to become the county’s medical examiner, and where her offices were located at the end of a dusty, unmarked road. Once a month, she gathered her staff for a meeting to discuss the issue that took up more than a third of their time: identifying the people who died trying to cross the border into the United States and sending their remains home. It was her belief that burial was the way to honor that a person had existed. “That he had walked on this Earth,” she sometimes said. Burial was the acknowledgment of universal human dignity, she believed, and the physical location of a family’s grief.
"Kids say the darnedest things." Back in the day, this was a favorite segment of Art Linkletter's TV program and it was amazing what kids did say! Amy Wang wrote a piece about one Seattle mother's attempt "[to] have children write letters to President-elect Donald Trump “about the importance of being kind to other people, even if they’re different than you are.." Lord knows, Mr. Trump does see himself as somewhat unique, so he might profit from reading his mail.
Two notable passings.
Gwen Ifill, Condolences were heard from around the globe at the death of PBS's pioneering correspondent and news anchor. Her level-headed determination to seek the truth will be missed.
Ruth Gruber. She was an American foreign correspondent who became a part of US/world history when she was sent by the FDR administration to accompany 1,000 Holocaust survivors as they sailed from Europe to the US on the ship Henry Gibbons. That trip became the basis for Leon Uris's book Exodus, the fictional classic about the founding of Israel. As she began the trip, Ms. Gruber correctly foresaw that henceforth her life would be all about survivors and freedom. A few years later, she was the first female correspondent to travel to the Soviet Arctic and report on the Siberian Gulags, another story of human determination and survival.
Unity. The town of Kent, OH, home of Kent State University, certainly knows a thing or two about the effects of controversy. Before this season's opening game, a senior on the basketball team, Deon Edwin, proposed to his coach that each team member go into the stands and invite a fan of a different race to join him on the floor for the singing of the national anthem. A school spokesman said, "It was cool because I don’t think anyone in the crowd knew what was going on. None of the fans knew about it beforehand.” Kudos for Deon and the team.
Reliable media? Columnist Kathleen Parker worries about a public which seems to increasingly distrust usual news sources. It is a new world, one with thousands of media sources, far right to far left, well informed to clueless, real to fake. She writes, "[D]istrust of legitimate journalism is no joking matter. What happens to democracy when an uninformed, misinformed or disinformed populace tries to make sound decisions? The simple and terrible answer is, democracy fails."
She might have also mentioned that Americans generally have little ability or inclination to look at their world and then critically "read between the lines. During the Cold War, it was often noted that over the years Soviet citizens in the now defunct USSR had learned to "read between Prava's lines," to discern what was and was very probably not true. Incidentally, Russians wryly appreciated that pravda is Russian for truth.
Puritan myths. It is that time of the year and in a Washington Post op-ed, Lori Stokes writes of the five myths about the Puritans. That they....
- Established a theocracy
- Had a special hatred of American Indians
- Hated sex
- Came to America to establish religious freedom
- Were relentless witch hunters
Alexander Hamilton. Consider how AH might have viewed the brouhaha that has ensured after this past Friday evening's performance.
The Democratic Party’s alienation from the rest of America was on full display at the Richard Rodgers Theatre on Friday night. And the left seems completely oblivious to how ridiculous it looks to the rest of the United States....People in the American heartland see all this, and they shake their heads in disgust. Today’s Democrats have become a party of coastal elites completely disconnected from the rest of America. Doubt it? Take a look at a county-by-county map of the 2016 presidential election...As a result [of the election], Republicans now control the House, the Senate, the White House, and (after President Trump picks a new justice to replace Antonin Scalia) there will be a restored conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
Thank you for reading. Have a very Happy Thanksgiving.
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